1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for fabricating a flat panel display device to realize easy separation of an imprinting mold from a substrate.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Recently, a great deal of research has focused upon formation of thin films of flat panel display devices using a patterning process employing an imprinting mold.
The patterning process is performed according to the following procedure. First, a liquid resin is applied onto a substrate, and an imprinting mold having a groove and a protrusion comes into contact with the imprinting resin. As a result, the groove and protrusion of the imprinting mold are reversely transcribed to the imprinting resin. The reversely transcribed imprinting resin is cured to form a desired thin film pattern on the substrate.
After the thin film pattern is formed, a process for separating the imprinting mold from the substrate is required. For the separation, conventionally, the imprinting mold was formed so as to be larger than the substrate. In this case, as the area of the substrate increases, the size of the imprinting mold increases, thus making supply of the imprinting mold difficult. In addition, as the area of the substrate increases, the gap required to separate the imprinting mold from the substrate increases, thus causing breakage of the imprinting mold. In order to solve this problem, the imprinting mold and the substrate were formed so as to have the same size. In this case, the size of the imprinting mold is decreased, but high mechanical force to separate the imprinting mold from the substrate is disadvantageously required.